"I have a thing for numbers, clocks, calendars and maps," says Boylan. "They...

Mike Boylan, a 27-year-old industrial designer (he's made everything from perfume bottles to snowshoes), lives in the quintessential Brooklyn apartment: airy, spacious and stuffed with tastefully cool art. "I strive for minimalism and fail completely," admits the avid flea marketer. "I like the shiny, rendered stuff you see in design magazines, but it's not a fun place to live." And Boylan is very much about the gritty details: an arrangement of obscure seashells or taxidermied bugs; two briefcases, his own and his grandfather's from when he was "a hot-shot real-estate agent," laid against a white wall, and so forth. "I can't not buy stuff," he sighs. "But I'm trying to be more selective. I'm a curated pack rat."

The Evolution Store (120 Spring St at Greene St; 212-343-1114, theevolutionstore.com)Boylan is a big fan of this Soho shop, loaded to the gills with preserved insects, ancient fossils, skulls and skeletons, and colorful zoological and anatomical posters. A real human skull could set you back $695, but decorative seashells and corals are sold at ocean-bottom prices ($1 and up).